Cavendish board talks road projects, speed limits and transfer station improvements Timko thanks board at his last meeting

By Lorien Strange
© 2025 Telegraph Publishing LLC

At Monday’s meeting of the Cavendish Select Board outgoing member George Timko thanked the board and said he hoped more people in Cavendish would get involved with local government. Timko has spent more than 20 years on the board and former board member Sandra Russo is running unopposed for his seat.

Most of the rest of the meeting focused on safety and town roads, including signing the state’s annual Certificate of Highway Mileage, deciding to look into adding a streetlight at Winery Road and Route 103 and discussing  a project to improve the intersection at Routes 131 and 103.

The Cavendish Town Plan, which was amended last year, highlights the need to encourage alternate modes of transportation—such as walking, biking and using public transportation—in town and generally increasing the safety of public roads.

To that end, the town has been working with the Mount Ascutney Regional Commission to develop a proposal for work on the intersection of Routes 103 and 131. MARC collaborated with a private contractor to develop and edit a Regional Project Refinement draft report.

MARC’s Logan Nicoll was present to explain that the draft report is a “very, very basic high-level overview” of the potential scope and feasibility of the project. The document is not intended to lay out a final design—just to note that an engineer should examine the area and determine potential improvements.

Select Board member Shannon Devereux asked if this could include bike lanes. “We’re talking about it,” Nicoll said, noting that bike-related infrastructure could be as simple as shared lanes or lines on the road. The town could also discuss putting in sidewalks, which Nicoll said would be “well within the scope” of the state-funded project (although the town would have to pay for continued sidewalk maintenance).

When asked about fixing speeding problems in the area, Nicoll said that rather than lowering the speed limit (which motorists are likely to ignore), the traffic engineers would probably look to implement visual cues that make people intuitively feel like they are supposed to slow down, such as narrower shoulders.

“There’s still plenty of time for town input,” he added, noting that the state’s project pipeline is backed up and that it would probably be another 5 to 10 years before the project went in motion. Nicoll confirmed that while the state prioritizes projects by need, progress would probably come in “fits and starts. It could be years before the state gets back to us, or we could hear back next week.”

The Select Board signed a required letter of support for the proposal, which acknowledged the process on the project so far and indicated that the town is in favor of moving it forward.

Also on the topic of speed limits and highway safety, Town Manager Richard Chambers mentioned an email he received from the Windsor County Sheriff’s Department noting that the school zone speed limit around Cavendish Town Elementary School can’t be enforced as long as the flashing lights on the speed limit signs are broken.

In his email, Lt. Anthony Leonard “encourage[d] the town to petition the state to reduce the speed limit from the Route 103 intersection (with Route 131/Main Street) all the way to the current 40 mile an hour zone at the eastern end of Proctorsville village.” That way, he wrote, the town wouldn’t have to fix the broken lights and would benefit from the reduced speeds through town.

“It’s not easy to change the speed limit, but it’s not that difficult,” Chambers told the board, explaining that the state would have to do its own assessment of the area. And in the meantime, he stressed, the broken light would still render the reduced speed zone unenforceable.

Devereux suggested that the town do both: fix the light while applying for the speed limit change. Chambers said he would talk to the school, which has a memorandum of mutual understanding with the state about the stretch of road in front of CTES, to discuss moving forward with either or both projects.

The Select Board also discussed updating the facilities at the town Transfer Station where there is no bathroom or reliable running water and not even a wastewater connection to the nearby treatment plant. “I think we can all agree there’s a real need for improvements,” Chambers said.

Because additional improvements would require a new or separate building and an engineer’s input, Chambers asked the Select Board if he should look into asking the engineer to do a traffic study, as well, to improve the flow through the transfer station.

The board agreed that the current building at the transfer station is “pretty bad” and that a study on the whole situation would be beneficial.

Chambers also reminded the Select Board that Town Informational Meeting will be held at 2 p.m. on Saturday, March 1 at the Cavendish Town Elementary School and online via Zoom. The Cavendish Baptist Church, which also serves as the town’s emergency shelter, will be providing refreshments with an optional donation box.

Voting will take place from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 4 at the Proctorsville Fire Station.